


Vulnerability

by threadoflife



Series: sherlock ficlets [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Sappy, Shmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 20:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8682487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: John looks through his old wedding album and gets stuck on pictures of Sherlock.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A thing I wrote on the phone for this horrible gif set to make my sads go away
> 
> http://wssh-watson.tumblr.com/post/153704061737/gryssenielsen-knightkui-he-is-the-greatest

There’ll be a day when John will see him like this again.

John stares down at the pictures in the album. Sherlock, with his perfectly done hair in a suit so similar to John’s own. He’d looked beautiful. It hadn’t been such a difference to his everyday appearance, if John is honest; it hadn’t been that. Sherlock always wore suits. It hadn’t been his hair, either, or his shined shoes, or the way the light cut across his face, or the way the collar opened around his long neck, or his elegant hands, or the dip of the small of his back, or any of the myriad of other things that John usually notices anyway.

No, that day, Sherlock had consisted of an untypical vulnerability that his brows and his eyes and his mouth and his restless fingers and his violin hadn’t been able to hide. And worse, he’d stood beside John in the same suit John had worn, so if John had closed his eyes and taken the freedom of a second’s imagination, he could have fooled himself into believing Sherlock had been there for a reason entirely different to the one he was actually there for. If he had taken that second, it would have been so easy: all that vulnerability was for him, yes, he knew that; but by God it would have been easy–if he’d done that–to imagine, for just that second, that Sherlock would be his.

Their wedding day, not John’s and Mary’s. Theirs: John’s and Sherlock’s.

God, the mistakes he’d made. The mistakes they’d both made. So much time, lost for nothing.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice cuts into his inner monologue, low and hoarse.

John closes the album, puts it on the sofa beside him, and his other hand is already in Sherlock’s hair. “Hi.” He smoothes Sherlock’s fringe back with his palm and bends to kiss his forehead. “You okay?”

Sherlock, nodding once, gives a happy little hum. He smiles slightly when he turns his head to push his cheek further into John’s hand as it comes down to cradle the side of his face.

Sherlock’s eyes flicker open, glance up at his face, and even though they’re sleep-drunk, John feels laid bare. Exposed. He doesn’t mind. He looks calmly back and allows Sherlock to read him like an open book. There are no secrets anymore.

When Sherlock asks a tentative, “You?” John lets the affection that blooms thickly inside his belly and chest show in his softened mouth, in his bright eyes.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is rough, but he doesn’t clear his throat as he would have done, once, to get the emotion out. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Sentimental old man,” Sherlock says after a moment. The reproach in his voice amused, light. “Age makes a fool of you.”

“Well, it only makes you more beautiful.” John’s fingers brush over the first beginnings of grey on Sherlock’s temple. He tucks one of the strands behind Sherlock’s ear. “I love you.”

Sherlock’s eyes close, and he turns his face to the side so he can hide it in John’s–these days somewhat gone soft–belly. John chuckles, used to such a reaction even after years. Sometimes Sherlock allows him to see how his eyes brighten when John says that. Sometimes they soften, or light up, and sometimes they get wet. John loves whatever those eyes do. He doesn’t have to see it to know it’s happening right now.

“I’m not the only sentimental old man around here,” John says, teasing, and tugs gently at Sherlock’s hair.  
Sherlock grumbles into his belly and only burrows his face in more. He keeps muttering something for a second or two, but then he turns his face a bit, looks up at John. John looks down at half of his face–the other half still hidden in John’s jumper–with his slowly greying hair a chaos around it, because Sherlock’s curls are still as riotous as they ever were. The one eye John can see is bright, and lit up, and wet. The cheek John can see is slightly flushed, a healthy, gorgeous reddish shade. The crinkles at the side of the eye John can see betray the slight curl of the mouth.

Sherlock is all John can see, now. Sherlock is all John had ever been able to see.

When John swallows, tightly, he lays the flat of his palm gently on the one exposed cheek. He holds it, reverently. It wouldn’t matter if Sherlock had only ever given John one side of him and hidden the other–John would still have been here, looking at him like this.

He doesn’t know what he is saying until he hears it. When he hears it, he’s unsurprised.

“Sherlock.” His voice is soft, low. Hushed, as if he’s speaking to a miracle, and it might disappear like an illusion if he speaks too loudly. “Will you marry me?”  


Sherlock’s one eye pins him into place, now overbright. There’s no breathing for a second or two, and John supposes that’s both of them. Then, in a flurry of movement–John gets a bony elbow to the chest–Sherlock is straddling him, cupping his face with such infinite care it sets John’s heart pounding. Sherlock is staring down at him with an expression John has never seen before. His lips are parted, and his hair is a mess, and his eyes are wide open. His chin folds twice, three times beneath his jaw. He looks so beautiful.

“Yes,” he says. There’s barely any voice to it; it’s more breath than anything. “Yes.”

The next yes is lost inside John’s mouth.

He will make Sheelock look like that again, John thinks later, in the darkness of their bedroom. Sherlock is sleeping on top of him, face mashed into his neck, as John is thinking of the album he’d looked at that evening. He’ll make Sherlock look like that again: they’ll wear the same suits, and he’ll give Sherlock the gift of wearing that vulnerability again, but this time in a safe space, in a space where there will be just the two of them, and he will kiss Sherlock, in front of everyone and privately; he will hold him; he will stand by his side; he will dance with him; he will love him. He will make Sherlock look like that again, vulnerable and exposed, and John will be right by his side, loving him and cherishing him, giving him all of that vulnerability back.


End file.
